From Star Wars... to Corrie cobbles
Soap to use Hollywood-style backdrops ... but what would Hilda and Stan think?
IT’S a long way from the ‘muriel’ that graced the wall of Stan and Hilda Ogden’s front parlour.
Coronation Street is getting the Hollywood treatment with technology usually employed in blockbuster movies.
ITV bosses have brought in a ‘volume wall’, which has hyper realistic computer- generated images on it so actors can be filmed against it apparently in any location.
Normally reserved for movies such as The Avengers and Star Wars series The Mandalorian, it will be used by the soap this month in a rooftop scene set against the Manchester skyline. Coronation Street chief Iain MacLeod said: ‘You just need a volume wall and then you can just go bang, and you’re in the Rovers and then you go bang and you’re in the Kabin.
‘Having physical sets might be an anachronism.’ He joked: ‘You can essentially design a 3D world, like the surface of Mars and you could stick Ken [Barlow] and Rita [Sulllivan] up there having a Mr Kipling and a cup of tea, should you wish.’